Tested by Fate (5 page)

“You must join me at the breakfast table, and acquaint me with her nature,” said Herbert, in his troubled, fussy way. “I am so often at a loss with the younger family members, fearing to open my mouth lest I offend some unknown sensibility.”

Nelson knew that to be the opposite of the truth and was confirmed in this opinion that evening just before dinner when, rum punch in hand, he sat in silence, while Herbert monopolised the conversation. It was the typical planter statement: about sugar, its price and position in the creation of a strong British nation; the way West Indian traders were ignored in the councils of government. He made the obligatory slash at the fools who would abolish slavery, with an aside to the effect that if they knew the black man better, they would be less forceful about freedoms.

Midshipman Hardy, lessons and duties completed, had arrived in the early afternoon, it being Nelson’s policy to introduce his youngsters to polite society as often as possible. Thus he rarely went ashore without one in tow, or ordered them to join him when he was being entertained, in the hope that by example and exposure to non-naval company they would improve their manners, as well as the quality of their conversation.

Hardy now sat rigidly on a hard chair as Herbert droned on, bored by all of this, his stomach rumbling for the food he could smell already, his eye fixed on a glass he had long emptied and hoped to see refilled. But Herbert rarely even flicked an eye towards the youngster. To him the lad was just one of Nelson’s foibles, one of that group of spotty midshipmen he always seemed to have in tow.

For all that conversational dominance, and his host’s utter
determination
not to acknowledge Hardy, Nelson had to admit that John Herbert had a kindly streak. Most planters did, with their easy come, easy go attitude to money, which would have been seen as reckless in colder climes. They gave gifts with a freedom that staggered new arrivals, and expected nothing in return. Herbert was exceptional only in that the base of his wealth was so secure that he did not,
unlike most sugar planters, run into debt on an annual basis.

“Ah! Fanny,” Herbert exclaimed, caught in mid-flow as his niece entered. Nelson had no idea that she had returned, but he was aware that he was happy to see her. “You have come most carefully upon your hour, as the bard said. I must visit your aunt Sarah in her sick bed, so for the next quarter of an hour I would ask you to entertain Captain Nelson.”

Just then Josiah Nisbet appeared from behind his mother, which made his great uncle frown. He then glanced at the rigid
midshipman
. “Josiah. You are much of an age with Mr …”

“Hardy, sir,” the midshipman replied, in his Devon lilt, his voice betraying the cracks, wheezes and strains of puberty. Spotty-faced, with thick lips that were designed never to smile, he was a big youth, broad, heavy jowled, and slow thinking.

“Quite. Take him out into the garden to work up an appetite.”

Thomas Masterman Hardy’s face was a picture of self-control that amused his captain. Was that ire due to being thrown into the company of a five-year-old, or the host’s failure to recognise his near starvation? Nelson reckoned on a combination of both.

“I will send a servant to sit with you and Captain Nelson, Fanny,” Herbert stated. He never forgot the need for propriety.

“Run along, Josh,” said Fanny. “That is, if Mr Hardy does not mind?”

“Ma’am,” Hardy replied, in a strangled tone.

Her voice was soft and melodious, reminding Nelson instantly of Mary Moutray, an impression that was strengthened by the elegant way in which she moved towards the fireplace to pull a bell rope.

“I shall summon a servant myself, since I suspect that between the door of this room and another my dear uncle will have quite forgotten. Believe me his many cares make him unmindful. You only see the obliging host, never the much put upon plantation owner. Might I request for you another rum punch, Captain?”

“Thank you, no, Mrs Nisbet. I fear my head is swimming enough with what I have taken in.”

He was only aware then that he had been staring hard at her, giving a
double
entendre
to his words that was unintentional. She blushed and dropped her eyes. He took the opportunity to admire the slim figure beneath the light muslin dress she wore.

“I must say I like your boy,” Nelson stammered.

She gave an engaging and musical laugh. “Not half as much, sir, as he esteems you. I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have shown him. He insists that you are the only person to whom he would issue an invitation if the right lay with him.”

“Then perhaps a turn in the garden, Mrs Nisbet, to see how he and Mr Hardy are faring.”

He held out an arm, which she accepted and they made their way out into the warm evening air.

T
HE GARDEN
was like the house, exquisite in the way each of the plants, shrubs and trees had been placed to provide gentle
promenades
. They soon came upon Josiah, who had persuaded Hardy to push him on the swing, the cry of “Higher!” repeated several times. Nelson felt her tense beside him as Hardy responded positively to the request, sending her son so far in the air that the tension broke on the ropes.

“Have no fear for him, Mrs Nisbet,” he said reassuringly. “Observe the grip of his hands. Josiah has clapped on like a true topman and nothing will dislodge him.”

“I cannot pretend to share your faith,” she replied with a slight gasp.

Nelson inclined his head towards hers, enjoying the gentle aroma of her lemon verbena scent. “That is, dear lady, because you have never yourself been aloft in a gale of wind. I do assure you he is in no danger.”

The tiniest squeeze she administered to his forearm as she replied to that was as pleasing as the sentiment she expressed. “I must accept your word, Captain. Josh wouldn’t thank me for interfering in a situation that his father would have let stand. I cannot tell you how the boy needs a man to help raise him.”

“Mr Hardy,” he called, aware that the authority he was about to show was designed to impress.

“Sir,” the midshipman replied, standing to attention then skipping smartly sideways to avoid a blow from the returning swing.

“I would request that you ease up on young Master Josiah. Not that I believe him at any risk, but it does no good to worry his mother.”

“Mamma,” Josiah wailed.

“It is my injunction, young man,” Nelson said, coming closer. “Though I expect your mother to be worried she has made no move to interfere.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said Fanny Nisbet, softly.

“I fancy you for a future sailor, sir,” Nelson continued, “like Mr Hardy here. Should you be lucky enough to be accepted into a King’s ship, I hope the first thing you would learn is that good manners towards the gentler sex are of primary importance. Is that not so, Mr Hardy?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

A gong rang out from the hallway to announce dinner. Nelson escorted Josiah’s mother back into the house, bowed to both Miss Martha and Miss Parry, then took up his place at Herbert’s right hand, several places up the table from Fanny. But as he ate and listened to Herbert, he watched her carefully. Fanny Nisbet was younger than Mary Moutray and pale of complexion, a tribute to the care she took to stay out of the fierce Caribbean sun. She had fine, if quiet manners and a cultivated mode of speech, peppered with enough French to let any listener know of her fluency in the tongue. The linen napkins they were using had fine embroidery at the edges, all Fanny’s handiwork, according to her uncle.

“I can’t think how I would manage without her, Nelson,” he insisted, after both ladies and youngsters had withdrawn, and his guest had alluded to her capabilities. “Montpelier is never run half as well in her absence, which I cannot help but notice as I am dragged away from some task to deal with domestic disputes. I swear she’s dearer to me than my own daughter.”

“I believe I have already said I can see ample cause for your esteem.”

“Then, sir, we shall drink to the lady, you and I.”

“Most heartily, sir,” Nelson replied, his mind suddenly a turmoil of future possibilities. Fanny Nisbet was not only attractive as a person, she was in all respects sensible. And as a favoured niece of a rich man, the lack of funds that had restrained him from proposals of matrimony in the past might be removed.

Young, vibrant creatures were all very well, but a sober spouse might serve him better. He could see her as an admiral’s wife, able to entertain the very best of society with an ease born of long experience. And she had shown her fecundity in the production of a son already, so that his potent desire to be a father would be likely to be satisfied.

“You would not, however, stand in the way of Fanny’s happiness, sir?”

“Of course not, Nelson,” Herbert replied, seeking to relight his pipe.

“Damn the man to perdition,” said Nelson, having read the latest letter from Admiral Sir Richard Hughes.

He was looking through the casement windows of his cabin to the packed anchorage of St John’s harbour, Antigua, the busiest port in the Caribbean, scene of his own first landfall in these waters as a mere child. If he recalled it as welcoming then, it was less so now.

He threw the letter aside. It was a reminder from on high that regardless of Nelson’s view on illicit trading into the islands, his commanding officer was not minded to act by ordering every ship in his squadron to intercept foreign vessels and seize their goods, nor to impound whatever they landed. The trouble was that Nelson had with him on his quarterdeck a whole posse of representatives from half a dozen islands, who wished to ensure that he followed the same course.

“Our visitors, sir?” asked Lieutenant Millar, anxiously.

In the silence that followed Millar reflected on the relations he had with Nelson, an intimacy he had never enjoyed with any other captain. No one had ever taken him into their confidence in a like manner, not just in a professional way but almost as a friend. Yet, while harbouring nothing but admiration for Nelson as a seaman, Millar often wondered if he knew what a fool of himself he made when he stepped ashore. This desire to take on the established order and turn it on its head was just one example. Right was only one of Nelson’s motivations, the other being an almost visceral need for
conflict, a trait often to be found in men of small physical stature. Sir Richard Hughes disgusted Nelson, with his fiddle-playing
indolence
and his fear of confrontation, a man who would agree with the last person he spoke to, who was very often his wife. Yet he had the prestige of his office, powerful friends and supporters at home, and was a person it was unwise to cross.

But that was as nothing to the Captain’s romantic attachments, Millar mused. Nelson had offered him many confidences for he saw the premier as a good and compliant friend. And Millar knew he would back him, even if it blighted his own career. He spoke to remind him of the need to act. “Sir!”

“Hold them for just another minute.”

“They have all said most forcefully that they have business to attend to, that they are civilians, and are not subject to the arbitrary power of the service.”

Nelson didn’t reply. He wanted his minute to make up his mind as to what to do. His inclinations were to ignore the Admiral and continue. But for once he heeded the advice of others and, instead of charging like a bull at a gate, stopped to consider the
consequences
. Taking on Sir Richard meant taking on the entire West Indian establishment: planters, traders, corrupt officials, and even a number of his fellow naval officers, happy to accept gifts in lieu of action. The only help he could muster was an authority three thousand miles away, which was scant comfort, especially since Admiralty support was not guaranteed. Against that, though, he was faced with withdrawal from a position that was, without doubt, right. No matter what opposition he could imagine, nothing was worth that. He looked into his premier’s florid face, a man who had stood by King George when his countrymen wouldn’t, and had lost everything because of it. How could he relent before such a man?

“Send them in, Millar.” He turned to Lepée, who was already glassy-eyed and it was only ten of the clock. “Start pouring, man. When they hear what I have to say to them they’ll need strong liquor to stay upright.”

It was a noisy, quarrelsome group who entered the great cabin
of
Boreas
, yet they were overly polite in the way they gave
precedence
to each other, as if to underline to this upstart naval fellow that they were all men of position. Nelson looked hard for his host from Nevis, and was relieved to see that Herbert wasn’t present. He stood to greet them, indicating that Lepée was standing by with refreshments, and waited until they all had a glass in their hands before raising his own. “Gentlemen, the King!”

“The King,” they replied in unison, drinking and talking noisily to each other. To their rear Lepée joined in the toast and downed another glass.

“Who is our anointed Sovereign, gentleman,” Nelson continued. “He has, through his ministers, instituted a series of laws known as the Navigation Acts.” That rendered the group silent and wary. “You know what these are so I won’t bore you with repetition. What I will say is this. That a
laissez
faire
attitude to the landing of illicit cargoes falls without those laws. I will therefore see it as my duty to clap a stopper on such activity. From now on any foreign vessel claiming the need to land a cargo, may do so.”

That made a few, the more foolish ones, nod. Other wiser minds were staring at him as though he was some kind of animal to hunt. “That cargo will be seized by His Majesty’s customs officials and destroyed. It will
not
be sold through the back door. Any customs officer colluding in such an act will end up in my cable tier, there to repent his sins.”

The cabin erupted, each man shouting in an attempt to
overcome
his neighbour. Hughes was mentioned somewhere in that cacophony, as were justice, poverty, local rights, and the
inadvisability
of such high-handed tactics. Nelson stood in the face of this barrage, thinking it worse than cannon fire, until it began to subside.

“The law rules in these islands, as elsewhere. If you wish it changed I suggest that my cabin is not the place to make your representations.”

“You will regret this, Captain!” shouted one voice, exciting a general murmur of agreement.

“How can I, sir, regret doing what is right?”

“I cannot do other than agree with you, Captain Nelson,” said John Herbert, apprised of what had happened, though surprised to receive another visit so soon from Nelson, “though it is like to cost me dear.”

They were walking in his gardens again, with Fanny Nisbet and Midshipman Andrews several paces to the rear, Josiah between them holding a hand of each. A sudden laugh from George Andrews caused the face of the boy’s sister to come to Nelson’s mind, which he suppressed quickly and guiltily. How long ago that seemed, St Omer and the beautiful Kate, yet it was only eighteen months.

“I am grateful for that, sir,” Nelson said, aware that Herbert was expecting a reply.

Herbert stopped, frowning, closing the gap between themselves and those bringing up the rear. “But you will struggle, Nelson, to persuade others of the rightness of what you do. You fail to
understand
the nature of the beast you attempt to control. As men they suffer from all the follies and vanities that are prevalent. They make vast sums after the harvest, yet spend even more to display the extent of their wealth. Every year most are obliged to mortgage their land to find the money to carry out planting, which they pay back from their crop before frittering the residue on outdoing each other once more. They drink heavily, gamble to excess, and purchase luxuries with an abandon that would shame a sultan.”

“You do not fall into that trap, sir,” Nelson replied, with some feeling.

“I have better land and I have husbanded my resources when times are lean. I must say, most of my fellow sugar planters do the opposite.”

“I cannot lay aside the law to oblige the profligate.”

“No. But do not think for one moment that reason will affect their opinions.”

The group behind had caught up and, to Herbert’s annoyance, Nelson offered his hand in place of Andrews’s to swing young Josiah.
He hadn’t finished lecturing his guest about the ways of the
plantation
fraternity.

“I fear you have vexed my uncle, sir,” said Fanny. Andrews had moved on, as politeness demanded, to walk beside Herbert. “You leave him in the company of enthusiastic youth, in which he finds scant comfort.”

“I would not upset him for the world, Mrs Nisbet, only for you.”

That reply lost some of its gallantry through Josiah’s insistence on continued swinging. But the look in the grey eyes told Nelson he had struck home, that if he chose to pay attention to her it wouldn’t be unwelcome. They chatted happily, assessing each other’s antecedents in a way that caused no offence. He mentioned his Walpole relations and his father’s clerical lineage, while she alluded to her connection to the Scottish Earldom of Moray. Her late husband, from a good Ayrshire family, had qualified as a doctor, though he found practice in Nevis hard due to his propensity to suffer from sunstroke.

Their sparring reassured her suitor. Nelson knew that she would not have volunteered such information without at least a passing interest in some future connection between them.

Lieutenant Ralph Millar put as much emphasis as he could into his latest set of objections, though it signified little to the recipient, his captain, lost as he was in the throes of yet another romantic attachment.

“Sir, how can you even consider such matters when you are confined to your ship and in danger of being clapped in gaol should you step ashore?”

To Millar’s mind, Nelson replied like a spoilt child. “There is a lady on Nevis to whom I can only communicate by letter, while I have to stay here in St John’s harbour to ensure that these damned planters do not humbug me with the first enterprising American trader.”

His premier wanted to mention Mary Moutray, not six months gone from the islands, who had so affected his captain that he had
claimed to be unable to breathe. But then he recalled the way Nelson had talked about Kate Andrews, when they had first become close enough to share intimacies. And he had heard from others, mutual acquaintances, of his attachment to the Saunders girl in Québec. He just had to conclude that his commanding officer was an incurable romantic, a slave to his passions, inclined to fall in love at the drop of a hat, never having succeeded enough in any of his suits to be exposed to the unhappy consequences of his actions.

The troubles he had now outweighed anything he had faced before, with the entire Leeward Islands establishment combining to sue him in their own courts for the cost incurred in his enforcement of the Navigation Acts. They claimed the loss of
£
100,000, and demanded that Nelson make redress. Millar had offered to take on some of the responsibility, even though he was as poor as his captain, only to be rebuffed with a reminder that Nelson’s rank demanded that it was he who had to face them down.